I carry no phone An aspiring Luddite In a wired world. Mastodon Verification Link	Jeff Berry is an early adopter of the Internet and the Web, was a late adopter of Twitter and left when it turned fascist, and always declined to adopt Facebook. He was a fairly early adventurer into the Fediverse. He admins a medievalist Mastodon instance. He hates cell-phones.

So far, the selections have been pretty random. Things at the front of whatever box was on top of the stack, or things like that. This time, I actually had a goal. I had thought I might do Grimjack, but then I had a further thought. Grimjack, I thought I remembered, had first appeared as a backup feature in Starslayer, so why not start with Starslayer?

The early 80s were a great time in comics. Artists and writers, the creators, were finding it frustrating that their creations were not theirs, but were owned by the comic companies. This had been the model for a long time, and it's why great names like Jack Kirby, who co-created Captain America, the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, and many others, could not take those creations with them to a different publisher - they stayed with Marvel. There was a push for creator-owned series. Kirby was one of the first to do this with Pacific Comics in 1981.

Another creator who was finding it frustrating was Mike Grell. Grell had worked for DC for years, notably on 'Green Arrow,' and on his own creation, 'The Warlord.' I liked his artwork and his writing. I even made a point of going back and getting a complete run of 'The Warlord.' His artwork is distinctive. Most comic heroes were chunky and muscley body-builder types of bodies. Grell's heroes tended to be lither, looking more like gymnasts than weightlifters. His style was fluid, with more curve in the lines of bodies on the page than most other artists. His splash pages are easily identifiable, in a good way.

As a quick aside, Grell's designs for the titular characters in 'The Warlord' and 'Green Arrow' were similar. Very similar. The hair colour was different. This was acknowledged in a Green Arrow story, written by Grell, in 1990 where The Warlord has come out of the Hollow Earth and keeps being mistaken for Green Arrow. I enjoyed that one.

In 1982, Grell took a creation of his called Starslayer to Pacific Comics. I was delighted. Starting with the second issue, there was often a short feature included that was outside of the Starslayer story. I remembered rightly that Grimjack was one, but there were others. Grell's initial story would run for six issues. After that, Grell took it to First Comics, and started to disentangle himself from the actual production, probably to focus on 'Jon Sable, Freelance,' another of his creations. This article will only cover the first six issues, and the next will pick up with issue seven.

Grell said that Starslayer was conceived as a sort of reverse Warlord. The Warlord was a modern man living in a swords and sorcery milieu in the Hollow Earth. For Starslayer, Grell took Torin Mac Quillon from fighting the Roman invasion of Britain in the first century, and pulled him into the future. The mysterious Tamara was responsible for his rescue from certain death, and she leads him on a mission to save the human colonies scattered across the (Terran) solar system.

The plot is only adequate, I have to say. Most issues are standard swords-and-sorcery style 'go to a place, kill the monster, take the object' quest stories. The overall story of what to do once the mysterious objects have been gathered has some nice twists to it. Better than the plot are the characters and their relationships. Grell writes Mac Quillon as a man coming to grips with everything he has ever known being ancient history as far as everyone else is concerned, and it's well done. The art is very good, not just his people, but the lines of the spaceships, the backgrounds, and all the little details.

The first six issues, then, are a tidy little compact story - decent but unexceptional - with some highlights in the characters and art.

Which brings us to the backup features. In a big way.

Issue 2 was the first appearance of Dave Stevens 'The Rocketeer', in a story which concluded in issue 3. Groo the Wanderer appeared in issues 4 and 5. Both went on to success in their own right.

'The Rocketeer' was pretty polished out of the gate. The story was obviously a set-up/teaser, but the script was tight and the characters were in place. The art was beautiful, and it was the first place many of us had heard of Bettie Page. The Rocketeer himself showed up in other comics for years, but the publication was slow. Then, of course, there was the movie. It's been years, but I remember thinking it was OK. Not good enough to watch again since the early 90's, apparently.

'Groo the Wanderer' was also a hit. Shortly after the two appearances here, Groo got his own title with Pacific. The title was later picked up by Marvel's Epic imprint and ran for years. It kept jumping from publisher to publisher, and it seems a new mini-series is in the works at the time of this writing.

Starslayer, it seems, was the least successful of the features in the first six issues.

With issue seven, Starslayer was part of First Comics, about which more next time!

• Comic Read Through Part Five